Quote of the day

“In Havana, I'd spend long hours contemplating a single street. Nothing - not a brand, an advertisement or a neon sign - distracted me from the city's sunlit surrender to time passing. At a colossal price, Fidel Castro's pursuit of socialism has forged a unique aesthetic, freed from agitation, caught in a haunting equilibrium of stillness and decay.”

Newspaper editor and columnist Roger Cohen writing in The International Herald Tribune about how Havana has been spared the “assault of marketing” found in capitalist cities such as New York. Nothing like a good equilibrium between stillness and decay to make privileged Westerners happy.